UTILISATION OF 1-OCTANOL AND DIESEL IN A SINGLE CYLINDER CI ENGINE

Abstract

The use of alcohols provides an attractive alternative fuel option for internal combustion engines. Alcohol can be produced using bio-refineries and may reduce the burden on fossil fuel resources due to renewable nature. There is a growing interest on using alcohols to substitute diesel fuel, as the use of oxygenated fuels involves oxygen enrichment leading to enhancement of premixed combustion phase and improved emissions. Various research related to the use of alcohols so far as alternative fuels for internal combustion engines has been focused on the employment of short chain alcohols, mainly methanol and ethanol, blended with fossil fuels. And long chain alcohols like butanol or Octanol have been barely investigated. The present study deals with the utilisation of octanol and diesel blends on a single cylinder diesel engine to evaluate performance and emissions parameters. The blend of octanol in 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% proportion with mineral diesel (v/v) were prepared. Evaluation of various physico-chemical properties of different test fuels was carried out. The characterisation results indicated reduced viscosity, density and calorific values for various Octanol-diesel blends compared to the baseline diesel fuel. However, the cold flow properties of the blends were found to be better than neat diesel. The experimental engine trial results showed an increase in brake thermal efficiency (BTE) with increase in volume percentage of 1-octanol in octanol-diesel blends. The increase in brake thermal efficiency was due to the oxygenated nature of octanol and reduced kinematic viscosity, leading to higher combustion efficiency and improved atomization. The brake specific energy consumption (BSEC) of OC 20 was found to be lowest. The emission analysis focused on all regulated pollutants, i.e. particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, carbon-dioxide and unburnt hydrocarbons. However, there was an increase in the carbon-dioxide emission with the increase in the volume of octanol added to octanol-diesel blend. The variation of NOx emissions for all the test increased for various octanol-diesel blends till 60% engine load and thereafter a downward trend was observed. Carbon-monoxide and Unburnt hydrocarbon and smoke opacity was found out to be lower than the baseline data of neat diesel.